GP d'Ouverture La Marseillaise - 1.3

France, February 5, 2002

Success for BigMat as Jan takes French opener

The BigMat Auber 93 team achieved success in its first race on home territory,
the GP d'ouverture La Marseillaise held over 144 km between Allauch and Aubagne.
Jan profited from a mistake made by his breakaway companion, Alexandre Botcharov
(Ag2r), who went off course with 500m to go and had to be content with second
place. In third was Cyril Dessel (Jean Delatour), who led a small group of riders
home.

The race was quite aggressive from the start, with Robbie McEwen (Lotto) and
Christophe Agnolutto (Ag2R) involved in several early breakaways, eventually
getting clear. The pair was still away at Cap Canaille (km 120), the day's main
climb, but were then caught and dropped by Xavier Jan, Alexandre Botcharov,
Peter Farajzin and Jo Planckaert (Cofidis), Lorenzo Bernucci (Landbouwkrediet).

Jan and Botcharov attacked on the last climb (Carnoux, km 131) and stayed
clear to win, as the others were caught by the remnants of the peloton. However,
Botcharov went off the parcours with 500m to go to hand the win to Jan.

Christophe Moreau (Credit Agricole) had some bad luck in his first race of
the season, when he fell and broke his collarbone. He will be out of action
for at least 4 weeks.